MEDIA RELEASE

HGA is today calling on the HFEA to ban the unethical practice of selecting children as tissue donors for their siblings.

HGA's Director, Dr David King said: "It is wrong to create a child simply as a means to an end, however good that end might be, because to do so turns that child into an object. This violates the basic ethical principle that we should not use people as tools. Unfortunately, this is just the latest example of how reprogenetic technology is turning children into commodities. We must not allow our desire to ease suffering to overwhelm one ethical principle after another. Public policy must not be based on individual families’ desperation, but on a sober assessment of the long term consequences for us all. This kind of policy-making is the job of Parliament, not of the HFEA.”

Notes for editors

1. Human Genetics Alert is an independent watchdog group funded by a leading British charity. It is not a 'pro-life' group, and our objection to the use of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis for this purpose is not based on a belief that it is wrong to discard embryos.

2. A full discussion of the issues raised by the use of PGD for tissue typing, which was published in the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, is attached.